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31 Days of NaNoWriMo Prep: Day 14 – Looking Back at the Second Week of Preptober

Whew. This has been a week. Between school and homework, writing these blog posts and filming/editing the corresponding YouTube videos, sending the first three chapters of my soon-to-be debut novel The Caspian Chronicles: The Forbidden Prophecy to my beta readers, outlining book two of The Caspian Chronicles for Preptober, going to see the YouTuber Markiplier live on tour, and having some semblance of a social life, I’ve been through a lot. In fact, on Thursday I broke down from all the stress and had a good cry. On the bright side, though, I’m feeling a lot better now, and I’m remaining optimistic as I make my way into the second half of this month.

The thing is, I’m just not used to having this much to do. I hate to admit it, but I used to be what most might consider “lazy.” My parents thought I was lazy, I’m sure my friends thought I was lazy… Hell, even I thought I was lazy. It turns out, though, that I just needed the right thing to motivate me. Once I decided to take this writing thing seriously, I got off of my lazy butt and started making something out of myself. That’s such a great feeling, but I will say that it’s incredibly weird to think that you’re some negative thing for such a long time, only to learn that you are not, in fact, that negative thing.

So, yes, I’ve been busy this week. That was both a good and bad thing. I’m only going to talk about what I did writing-wise in this blog, but if you’d like to know about the other stuff I was up to, you can check out my vlog here.

As far as prepping goes, I did get a bit of outlining done. Not as much as I’d hoped, but a decent amount. I was able to get a skeleton down, at least, and I managed to get down a good chunk of one specific subplot that I was looking forward to working on. Hopefully in the next two weeks I’ll have time to put more meat on the bones and plan out all of the scenes that I’ll be writing this November. I have to say, working on this outline makes me giddy. Literally giddy. I just love this book so much, even though I haven’t started writing it yet. I think it’s because this is where things really start getting put into motion. Book one was a lot of world building and setting up character relationships and different dynamics, but this is where I get to have a lot more fun with what I put my characters through. All in all, it’s gonna be a good time.

Other than that, I also was able to get the first three chapters of The Forbidden Prophecy out to my betas, like I mentioned earlier. That was nerve-wracking, to say the least. I had a legitimate moment of panic where I thought, “What if it’s not perfect? Should I send this to people if it’s not perfect?” only to realize that that’s the point of sending it to beta readers. They’re supposed to find the things that aren’t perfect and point them out to me so that I can fix them and make them better. Still, hitting that “send” button was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, but I did it, and I’ve already gotten one questionnaire back for chapter one! It was actually from my ex-boyfriend, of all people. He and I are on good terms, and he actually gave me great constructive criticism while also cracking a few jokes. I received his questionnaire on Thursday, which was also the day I had my small mental breakdown, and it actually made me feel a lot better.

So, yeah. Other than that it’s been a lot of school work and stuff. Also, Markiplier’s “You’re Welcome” Tour. Again, if you’d like to hear more about that, check out today’s corresponding vlog. Even though this week has been nuts and I became a little overwhelmed, I still think it’s been a great one. I’ve been productive and keeping up with everything, and I’ve been having a lot of fun. So, cheers to that! And here’s hoping I have another good week ahead of me!